Review: Picnic with the Pops with U2 Symphony

"U2 Symphony - the Ultimate U2 Tribute" and the Columbus Symphony created what the Bono impersonator called "a beautiful Saturday in the park" on Saturday night in the Columbus Commons.

Gary Budzak, For The Columbus Dispatch

“U2 Symphony — the Ultimate U2 Tribute” and the Columbus Symphony created what the Bono impersonator called “a beautiful Saturday in the park” on Saturday night in the Columbus Commons.

Tribute groups are nothing new for those seeing a Picnic with the Pops concert, but those acts often are impersonating bands from the past, like the Fab Four’s recreation of the early, middle and later-period Beatles last month. However, U2 Symphony is a tribute band to a group that is still alive and kicking.

U2 Symphony is a Los Angeles-based quartet that not only sounded like U2, they looked kind of like them, had their mannerisms and used similar equipment. Blond-haired, sunglass-wearing Jason Thiesen played singer Bono; Scott Jones played bassist Adam Clayton; Carl Macchia played guitarist The Edge; and Steve Judd played drummer Larry Mullen Jr.

Thiesen uttered a lot of platitudes, a la Bono, but they were fun, and he referenced Columbus often. For example, he introduced Vertigo as “Spanish lessons in Columbus, with a fake Irish accent.”

On every song, the symphony had something to play, even if it was only the chorus. There were times they were drowned out, but other times, they added to a song like Elevation.

What was also cool was that U2 Symphony didn’t just do the hits, they also dipped into the band’s songbook with material like Zoo Station; City of Blinding Lights; Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me and Walk On. Of course, the band did play a lot of U2’s best, such as New Year’s Day; Sunday Bloody Sunday; One; Beautiful Day and Where the Streets Have No Name.

One negative was that the group didn’t play the entire concert, so there were a lot of good U2 songs that didn’t get heard.

In the first half, conductor Albert-George Schram led the symphony in Giusseppe Verdi’s overture to La forza del destino and told a story about how latter-day opera singers feel the work is cursed.